A new video on YouTube shows the work of UKAzzer, who has (apparently) intrepidly worked out how to play the new SimCity offline with some home hacking, in spite of EA's suggestions this would be a massive, if not impossible undertaking (thanks Videogamer). Here's word:

So with a little bit of package editing within SimCity, and a little playing about in the code, it's possible to enable debug mode. I linked the activation to the "Help Center" button in the main menu for ease. Most debug features are disabled without having an actual developer's build (they have terraforming tools etc. available in the full developer build!), but a few things do still work - including editing the main highways.

Not only that - but you can edit the highways ANYWHERE - even outside of your city boundary... and even if you quit the game and log back in later, it's all saved safely on the server.

This shows that highway editing will be easily possible, AND that editing outside of the artificially small city boundaries should be very viable too.

Other things I have modded out with a quick change: Unlimited time to remain disconnected (won't get booted at 20 minutes, can now be disconnected "forever"). Population count now shows REAL figure, not the "artificially inflated" figure. My large cities have a population of about 15k now, not 100k :P

The bar has been set, for our age of dumbed down AAA sequel iterations, nothing new here, moving right along,

I am however, still holding my breath, for the upcoming new online Command & Conquer, I think that will be a worthy multiplayer sequel to what was Gen Zero Hour, and frankly I couldn't care less about Single Player missions in that game, we know how EA would handle that one!

we need to stop fuming at EA, our voices are falling on deaf ears, I know very well how large corporate companies are run, with lawyers at the top that will stop at NOTHING to prevent a healthy cashflow to their owners. They will arrest their own family members, if it means preventing internal corruption to the company. I've seen all kinds of things, with these bean counters are at the top of the chain in command.

Simcity, and Diablo are dead, we need to get off our collective asses, and go program our own worthy software, get to kickstarter, and make games for gamers, once again, or rekindle the magic that we once had since the glory days of Commodore, or lets give new aspiring young players, that same feeling we once had, as EA and Activision are not going to be doing this for us anymore, not this generation.

MAKE our OWN games, STOP wasting our precious time playing THEIRS.

not even remotely interested in playing a free Simcity 2013 offline, it is broken beyond belief, and will see if they manage free overhaul to that game, in 2 months time.

/ as a simoleon: leaves work, gets in car, and drives to first residential home, and barges in, wakes up old granny in bed, and I roll over to sleep.

Tumbler wrote on Mar 14, 2013, 10:08:Hopefully someone can put out a simple to install mod that just rips this game free of the online mode and lets people just have fun. Quadrupling the size of the city space would be nice too.

Except that it's so broken that quadrupling the size of the city would mean it all goes to @#$% 4x faster.

Look, folks - this isn't about their crappy launch issues. Now that we know how little the servers are really doing, I'm gonna grab my tinfoil tri-corner hat and declare that the launch issues were likely orchestrated.

What's that, you say? Orchestrated? PHSAW!

But wait! Once they started ironing out the launch issues it took all of, what, a day before everyone realized that there is NO FREAKING AI??

They got an extra week of sales from stupid people who heard that the initial hour or so of gameplay was fun (which it is) and that all the issues were just rocky MMO launch issues.

Instead, they released a completely fubar non-functional non-Sim non-City non-game, and everyone's focused on their DRM. Yeah, the DRM sucks, their launch sucks, but let's not lose sight of the fact that the GAME sucks after the initial hour or two.

I hired a gypsy to curse my friend that coerced me into pre-ordering, installing Origin, and bringing shame upon the House of Napalm.

Yakubs wrote on Mar 14, 2013, 09:59:When everyone is blasting EA for lying, let's not let Maxis off the hook here. They deserve just as much indignation for this mess of a game release and it pains me to see them potentially getting away from this without much damage to their reputation.

And *THIS* is why people still get fooled by EA. There is *NOT* difference between EA and Maxis, just like there is no difference between EA and BioWare, or between EA and *ANY* of the other studios they've bought, looted, and run into the ground.

All of the heads that created the awesomeness that you grew to love are gone (Will Wright & co). Much of the talent was farmed out.

Just look at BioWare as a perfect example.

For a decade they were a single studio making amazing RPGs (and some other stuff really, really early on). Then EA buys the name. The head honchos and founders and head writers walk away. EA spreads out the talent among a bunch of other studios. Now, instead of "BioWare" we have "BioWare Edmonton, BioWare Austin, BioWare Montreal, BioWare Ireland, BioWare San Francisco, and BioWare Mythic". Instead of amazing, story-driven RPGs, EA decides that they'll slather the BioWare name on such turds as the F2P Warhammer game, an iOS Ultima game, and Command & Conquer Generals 2.

The studio that we all loved is dead and its corpse has been looted beyond recognition.

That mentality applies to all victims of EAdom, Maxis included.

The fact that you think that Maxis has a "reputation" that is separate from EA shows that you haven't learned this lesson yet. The crap that EA has been shoveling under the Maxis label should have taught you that. Spore anyone? (Sims 3 wasn't terrible, but it showed EA's assault on the modding community better than any example I could think of at the time it was released)

Seriously... once EA buys a development studio... that studio and EA are the exact same thing. Shame on anyone who hasn't learned this yet.

InBlack wrote on Mar 14, 2013, 10:38:31 posts in and no one has mentioned the "artificially inflated" population figure???

I just don't get why they bothered? Everyone knows the city sizes are pathetic, so was that just a lame attempt to try to hide it, or something?

mazling wrote on Mar 14, 2013, 10:43:"OH! Let's just go back to the old sim games..."Why nobody has yet mentioned Sid Meier's SimGolf is beyond me!

SimGolf was awesome, but my interest quickly tapered off after I'd designed about two full-18 courses. It just lacked that "I want to watch it" factor after you built it. Your city in Sim City 4 grew and grew and grew, and it was fun to watch it grow.

31 posts in and no one has mentioned the "artificially inflated" population figure??? Now we know why cities go bust after a certain point. Fuck you EA, fuck you to hell and back. Im glad I didnt buy this game and I feel sorry for all the people who fell for your lies.

Yakubs wrote on Mar 14, 2013, 09:59:When everyone is blasting EA for lying, let's not let Maxis off the hook here. They deserve just as much indignation for this mess of a game release and it pains me to see them potentially getting away from this without much damage to their reputation.

At this point I make no dinstinction between EA and Maxis. They're both the same crap.

Quboid wrote on Mar 14, 2013, 10:18:If there was ever a time for the SimCity 4 community to put all their petty territorial bullshit to one side and work together to make a community patch, it's now.

There's masses of great SC4 content out there but it's all separated and all over the place and much of it is probably hosted on MegaUpload and other dead servers. Last time I looked, everyone was much more interested in being top dog of the SC4 community than actually making the SC4 community pleasant.

They could make a minimal patch with the traffic fix (Network Addon, I think) and other balance tweaks, and then another huge patch with extra stuff: more roads; buildings; landmarks.

If only. That's the story of SimCity right now. If only.

Yeah, SC4 has to have about the most fragmented modding community I've ever seen. Imagine if all those guys had the same cooperation as, say, Skyrim has. Nobody would have bought SimCity, because nobody would have had to...

wtf_man wrote on Mar 14, 2013, 09:41:It would seem easier to buy Sim City 4 Deluxe on Steam and add the widescreen parameters: Widescreen Settings

I've been tempted. Really my biggest drawbacks are that A) I'd be giving ~ 7$ to EA.B) I remember full well that the main Sim City 4 bug, where a single unemployed Sim can fucking ruin your city, has remained ever unfixed to this day. In fact, in most large cities that I've viewed on Youtube, it says they are all using mods of some kind to get around it.

Maybe Steam will put it on sale for $5 again sometime soon. Figures that I gave away my SC4 and Rush Hour DVDs to students at my wife's school last year...

Beamer wrote on Mar 14, 2013, 09:28:Instead, though, I went to RollerCoaster Tycoon 2. It's funny, I had started Dishonored and have XCOM installed but not yet launched yet I ended up going back to RCT2 and have put like 10 hours into it since Friday.

Hear, hear! The RCT series are great games. I'd love to see a new attempt at it, but given the steaming pile we keep hearing about now, I shudder to think what a new studio would do to RCT. I'll just go back play the originals I guess. Can't perfect perfection.

If there was ever a time for the SimCity 4 community to put all their petty territorial bullshit to one side and work together to make a community patch, it's now.

There's masses of great SC4 content out there but it's all separated and all over the place and much of it is probably hosted on MegaUpload and other dead servers. Last time I looked, everyone was much more interested in being top dog of the SC4 community than actually making the SC4 community pleasant.

They could make a minimal patch with the traffic fix (Network Addon, I think) and other balance tweaks, and then another huge patch with extra stuff: more roads; buildings; landmarks.

Yeah, I don't understand why anyone would want to do these ultra efficient, ultra-unrealistic towns. If I wanted to play a spreadsheet, I'd play Football Manager.

I think I've played for more than 20 minutes disconnected. I don't remember ever being kicked out. I've certainly been unable to connect a few times and lost the server connection in-game many times but never suffered any penalty or rollback. Maybe it briefly got a connection every so often.

I'm interested in that last bit too, the population showing the real figure.

Yakubs wrote on Mar 14, 2013, 09:59:When everyone is blasting EA for lying, let's not let Maxis off the hook here. They deserve just as much indignation for this mess of a game release and it pains me to see them potentially getting away from this without much damage to their reputation.

There is no difference between EA and Maxis. Its the same company. EA only kept the Maxis name for brand reasons.

That may be strictly true but I doubt they disintegrated legacy Maxis and replaced them with EA workers. This is mostly the original Maxis except now they're just a piece of another organization, no?